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Boulder's coyote hazing sees eventful first day as new incident reported

Hazing session cut short by report of another menacing episode

By Charlie Brennan Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
01/18/2013 01:55:35 PM MST

Updated:
01/18/2013 07:02:23 PM MST

Larry Rogstag, area wildlife manager with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, checks his phone while looking for a coyote on the Boulder Creek Path in Boulder on Friday, Jan. 18, 2013. (Mark Leffingwell / Daily Camera)

Day one of Boulder's coyote hazing initiative was abruptly curtailed by, appropriately enough, yet another aggressive coyote incident -- now the eighth in a three-week period.

The story on the first day of a 28-day program to "re-educate" coyotes that have been bothering, and in one case even biting, people along the Boulder Creek Path between 30th and 55th streets is actually the story of the hazer and the hazed.

Close to the same time that one coyote was being hazed by city Open Space and Mountain Parks education and outreach staffer Kaitlyn Merriman on Friday morning, a man walking a dog near 49th Street was menaced at close range by a coyote with "ears back, teeth bared," according to Val Matheson, Boulder's urban wildlife conservation coordinator.

"The coyote was trying to get at his dog," she said.

That episode, reported shortly before 8 a.m., de-escalated only after the man kicked repeatedly at the animal, discouraging it from harassing him and his pet further. Matheson said that coyote was observed to have mange -- skin disease -- on its left flank.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Merriman had set out on the path in the same general vicinity, armed with a water bottle filled with pennies to shake in the direction of any coyotes she might encounter, one of the hazing strategies being pursued to teach coyotes in the area that people are not their friends, and are to be avoided.

It was at the junction of the Boulder Creek Path and Goose Creek Path that Merriman encountered a coyote, its head poking out at her from the brush. She engaged it for the next 30 minutes or so, she said, without its either showing fear of her, or menacing her.

"I kept it in my sight, and was following along, shaking at it with my bottle," she said. "I never felt threatened or scared by the coyote. It definitely seemed really used to seeing people."

But after Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers arrived in the area to follow up on the episode involving the aggressive coyote that menaced the man walking his dog, Merriman and a second hazer from her department were instructed to curtail their activities. That's partly because it wasn't known whether the coyote in the first incident and the second were one and the same.

"When there has been a serious, aggressive encounter that we're assessing, that is not the time to be hazing," Matheson said.

However, she said the four-week program of proactive hazing of coyotes in that target area, paired with educational outreach to people using the path for recreation and commuting, will continue as planned.

And Merriman said she'll be happy to continue participating in the program, despite Friday's excitement.

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